


I am standing on the edge of forever

by GriffinExtinct



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: F/F, Gen, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-10
Updated: 2015-11-10
Packaged: 2018-04-30 23:02:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,333
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5182928
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GriffinExtinct/pseuds/GriffinExtinct
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Dag begins to take down history, Day One is the day that Joe died: an old king falling, a new kingdom rising. The past is gone but the future is unwritten.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I am standing on the edge of forever

When Dag begins to take down history, Day One is the day that Joe died: an old king falling, a new kingdom rising. She takes the details carefully, marking them down onto paper and cloth and her own skin.Sometimes Capable spends long hours reading her friend, following the tiny black markings with her fingers and her eyes. … _and planted the paperbarks along the ridge to… …told me the story of when they were young and… …as a result of the plague in Year 4 that left our people…_ Dag is a story: one of her own as well as part of their collective tale. They all know it by now. They all learn and remember it. 

They build a Wisdom Room and fill it with tables and ink and the books from the vault. It’s a small collection to begin with, but some others offer up their own books, secret and hidden away, falling apart and deeply beloved. And now with every journey the Travellers make outwards for supplies and friendships, there are usually books found and brought back reverently to add to the collection.

One exciting trip had them returning with tales of the beautiful place they’d found half buried in the sands, a sign fallen down over the broken glass doors reading IBR RY and within it were books upon books upon books. (One of the very oldest men in the Citadel told them it had once been a place where people were allowed to borrow these books and take them home. Key, who had once been a Milking Mother, immediately and delightedly latched onto this idea and took control of turning their own Wisdom Room into such a place.)

Toast is the one who paints above the door, jaw set, hand firm,  _Those Who  Forget History Are Doomed To Repeat It._

Capable’s own problem is that history always feels too hard to forget. By Year Ten her hair has become a hymn to precious metals: silver and copper, and it never fails to attract adoring attention of men who can hardly believe how shine she is.

She’s taken few physical lovers over her life, but she forms bonds so strongly and with so little time. Still Capable overflows with love and she spends a lot of it on the children of her sisters: On Beloved, who is almost a teenager now and looks not at all like Dag: Shorter, Darker, Rounder; on Green and Rain, Cheedo the Fireheart’s young ones, their names prayers for all that is good. (And the third child, born too soon, born wrong, cherished for the few weeks he had lived among them before passing away and into the Arms of Angharad.)

Year Ten marks also the year that the messengers come to them from the Bullet Farm. For a long time that city was a lost place, filled with nothing but in-fighting and violence, anarchy and death.

But on a sweltering December day, when the haze above the sand makes all the city look like an ocean, the convoy arrives. Furiosa wants to shoot first without asking questions but she is over-ruled. Despite that, she also refuses to let the council go down to meet them without her being there and armed. Capable can feel the older woman bristling beside her as they watch the strangers pile out of their cars. 

The woman who comes to the front introduces herself, her hands open in front of her to show she holds nothing dangerous. None of them are holding weapons, although the others all wear them. Her name is Mallee, she tells them, and she has come seeking to make friendship on behalf of her sister Gulabaa, who now rules the Bullet Farm.

(Capable would later learn, upon meeting Gulabaa, that the sisters were twins, completely identical but for the long knife scar that cut down the right side of Mallee’s face.) 

There is suspicion around the Citadel but there is also hope, and that night Mallee and her followers eat with the council, sharing in their self-grown crop of potatoes, kutjera, and bush tomatoes, as well as three of the bred goanna baked in the fire. 

There is talk late into the night and Capable and Mallee are the last of them there, talk turning to childhoods, to history, to hopes and family.

The sun is beginning to rise when Mallee reminds Capable that she has to return to the Bullet Farm and Capable, without meaning to, asks, “but you’ll come back, won’t you?”

For a long minute they look at each other and then Mallee nods slowly. “I think that I will. There’s things here I should explore.”

Capable feels her stomach shift. She nods.

Mallee returns once a month with her crew, often now bringing weapons in trade for crops. Capable dislikes that, but Toast reminds her that the world is not a friendly place and that people always want to take what they have. Capable knows this, but it doesn’t mean she likes it. She wants, in some ways, to pretend that there is a peace in the world now. Toast rolls her eyes. 

Capable shows Mallee the Wisdom Room and it’s there, almost a year later, while looking over a book of botany together, that Mallee leans in suddenly and kisses Capable. It’s like fire inside her bones and Capable wraps her fingers in the rough material of Mallee’s dress and pulls her close, presses her body hard. She had thought about this so many times but neither of them had made any move, frozen with indecisions and halted by past mistakes. They shed clothes and Capable is shaking, her breath catching in little moans. Mallee buries her face in Capable’s skin, breathes her in, groans when she touches her.

“You’re so beautiful,” Mallee murmurs. “You’re so beautiful.”

Capable is only slightly aware that the door is not closed, that anyone could come into this space and see them like that, see Capable naked and arched, see Mallee’s face between her thighs as she bucks against her and tries not to cry out.

_Please, please, please_ , Capable whimpers, unaware of what she’s saying.

_Anything,_  Mallee whispers back, fingers moving inside Capable as she watches her face contort.  _I’ll do anything._

_Just kiss me._

They dress again afterwards, but they can’t stop touching each other, can’t stop smiling at each other.

It’s the worst kept secret in the whole Citadel and Capable doesn’t even mind. 

Cheedo, one night, says, “she reminds me of Angharad”, and although Capable wants to argue - they look nothing alike, not even a little - she sees it when she starts taking note. Revolutionary spirits who talk too loud too late into the night about things that Need To Change. Women who’s least interesting trait is their remarkable beauty. Capable feels conflicted about this realisation: a sadness at the reminder of missing Angharad, even after all these years, and a strange sort of happiness that she’s fallen in love all over again with the same woman.

In Year 12 Mallee leaves the Bullet Farm for good, unable to stay so far away from Capable. Capable doesn’t argue. Dag starts reading old books involving people getting married and leaving them around conspicuously. She mentions how nice a wedding sounds, doesn’t it sound nice? Wouldn’t it be nice to have one of those here?

When Capable and Mallee do marry, Dag tattoos matching designs onto their hands, a delicate pattern of trees to grow along with them. It’s the most wonderful gift and any time Capable sees Mallee’s hand across a room she knows that Mallee is hers. They get to be a pair. They get to match.

“It’s strange, isn’t it?” Capable says to Toast one night, watching as Mallee wrestles, laughing, with Beloved. “The places that life takes us?”

Toast raises her head from her drink and follows Capable’s adoring gaze. Then she half-smirks at her sister, her oldest friend, and says, “yeah. Sometimes it’s not so bad.”


End file.
